…is a new MacBook Pro with my name on it. My old MacBook Pro failed to fire up Monday afternoon and is exhibiting the symptoms of the Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT failure outlined here and here. Basically, when you fire it up, you hear the optical drive arm move, the internal fans spin up and get no video. It was fine when I put it to sleep on Sunday evening and then dead when it woke up (or didn’t wake up) on Monday afternoon. I called Apple support, mentioned the Tech Note number and discussion thread, and was told that it sounded more like a power issue than the Nvidia issue. The technician would not send me a shipping box, instead telling me to take it to an authorize repair center to have it diagnosed. It does match the symptoms described in the discussion thread, and many of those people have now received extended, out of warranty repairs, so I’m confident that once I take it to an Apple Store, it will be repaired at no charge. The problem with this is that the nearest Apple Store is an hour and a half away (at least until the new Modesto Apple Store opens up:), and I’ll have to take an afternoon off from work to get MBP there.

I try not to be an Apple apologist, and working in the tech field, I know that sometimes shit happens with computer hardware, particularly portables. My MacBook Pro is 17 months old and has served me well. It is my primary workstation and has seen many, many hours of web browsing, e-mail, web development and high-end gaming (I’m a World of Warcraft addict:). I am hoping that it will be repaired under the warranty extension, but I won’t get too pissy if it isn’t. My Apple products over the years (many, many years and many, many products:) have always performed well and in most cases have outlived their usefulness as web and general computing technologies have progressed. I’ve never had a hardware failure this early in the life of any of my computers, so maybe I was due. But still, I’d like to have my MBP repaired so that it can continue to serve my family. Time will tell and I’ll report on how this goes in the future.

Shiny new MacBook Pro!

In the meantime, out of necessity I ordered one of the new 15″ MacBook Pros released on Tuesday. It is currently on a FedEx plane somewhere over China. It should arrive Monday or Tuesday. I bumped up the processor to 2.8 GHz and the hard drive to 320GB at 7200 rpm. I am always excited to get a new computer, and this one is no exception. The new dual video card option is a real bonus, particularly for gaming. Hopefully, I can get my curent MBP into target disk mode one more time (I have been able to get all of my data off the drive) to move everything seamlessly on to the new laptop. I’ve been a good boy lately, so I’m sure the Computer Gods will look down favorably on me:)